CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background Of The Study
Over the years, most projects in organizations especially those of the Zerock, Rhas and New Idea Construction companies in Owerri, might have been subjected to poor performance and abandonment following the inability of the management of such projects to apply quality assurance techniques in the execution of such projects.
According to Jaideep (2009), the definition of quality varies in different contexts. On one hand, we talk of software quality that means adopting standards and measures to ensure the building of software product that meets all customer requirements (design, interface, business requirements, functional requirements, etc) and ready to deliver. On the other, hand, project quality refers to the standard and measures by means of building (or adopting) to ensure successful completion of a project, in terms of time and revenue. This starts right from initiation of the project to its implementation stage and continues to the post implementation stage. In the context of software-the quality means software strategy, plan, test cases, test scenarios, test results and fixing of bugs. Inclusion of quality in this context will vary from organization to organization and project to project (within an organization). This will ensure the successful building of software product ready for delivery. In the context of project, the quality would mean managing quality standards and measures for a project right from its initiation to all stages coming forth. A project life cycle in standard terms would comprise of project initiation, project planning, development execution, implementation, execution, project close-out, and post implementation phase broadly, which remains on-going till the software built is in use by the customers for a period of years (Jaideep, 2009).
Also, according to the project management book of knowledge PMBOK (2005), to perform quality assurance means applying-the planned, systematic quality activities to ensure that the project employs all processes needed to meet requirements. Quality assurance is the application of planned systematic quality activities to ensure that the project will employ all processes needed to meet requirements. Quality assurance is the application of planned systematic quality activities to ensure that the project will employ all processes needed to meet requirements (PMBOK, 2005). A quality assurance department or similar organization often oversees quality assurance activities. Quality assurance supports, regardless of the unit’s title, may be provided to the project team, the management of the performing organization, the customer or sponsor, as well as other stakeholders not actively involved in the work of the project. Quality assurance also provides an umbrella for another important quality activity, continuous process improvement. Continuous process improvement provides an iterative means for improving the quality of all processes (PMBOK, 2005). Such quality assurance inputs as quality management plan, quality metrics, process improvement plan, work performance information, approved change requests, quality control measurement, implemented change requests, implemented corrective actions, implemented defect repair and implemented preventive action must be performed (Anyanwu, 2007).